Emails Suggest Cuomo Undersold His Role in Altering Covid Report (original) (raw)

New York|Emails Suggest Cuomo Undersold His Role in Altering Covid Report

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/19/nyregion/cuomo-nursing-homes-covid.html

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Andrew Cuomo said he could not recall seeing or revising a New York State Health Department report on how the state handled the early stages of the pandemic.

Andrew M. Cuomo is seated with his back to an audience, awaiting to speak before a House panel earlier this month.

Documents reviewed by The New York Times show that Andrew Cuomo rewrote parts of a New York State report that deflected blame for nursing home residents who died of Covid. Credit...Anna Rose Layden for The New York Times

Sept. 19, 2024, 3:00 a.m. ET

Earlier this summer, former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo squared off for a closed-door interview with seven members of a Republican-led congressional subcommittee investigating how New York handled the early days of the coronavirus pandemic.

Mr. Cuomo was asked repeatedly about a State Health Department report that deflected blame for the thousands of people who died of Covid at nursing homes in early 2020. Mr. Cuomo stood by the report and said he certainly did not review it and insisted he had no memory of seeing it before its release.

But a review of emails and congressional documents appears to show how Mr. Cuomo not only saw the report, but personally wrote parts of early drafts.

“Governor’s edits are attached for your review,” Mr. Cuomo’s assistant Farah Kennedy wrote in an email sent to several members of the ex-governor’s senior staff on June 23, 2020. “The smaller text in the beginning is from your original document. He replaced your paragraph on page 3 beginning with ‘But, like in all fifty states, there were Covid-positive cases.’”

Mr. Cuomo apparently inserted language to underscore how “community spread among employees or possibly visitation by family and friends were relevant factors” that contributed to nursing home deaths.

“The larger text,” Ms. Kennedy noted, “is what he added.”

The email exchange among Mr. Cuomo’s aides, which was reviewed by The New York Times, was one of many sought by the Justice Department and a law firm retained by the State Assembly as it prepared to impeach Mr. Cuomo in 2021.

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